Mouré - Furious

FURIOUS

ALSO BY ERIN MOUR

Poetry

Empire, York Street (Anansi, 1979)
The Whisky Vigil (Harbour, 1981, chapbook with drawings)
Wanted Alive (Anansi, 1983)
Domestic Fuel (Anansi, 1985)
WSW (Vhicule, 1989)
Sheepish Beauty, Civilian Love (Vhicule, 1992)
The Green Word: Selected Poems 19731992
(Oxford University Press, 1994)
Search Procedures (Anansi, 1996)
The Frame of a Book (or A Frame of the Book)
(Anansi, 1999, Sun & Moon, Los Angeles, 1999)
Pillage Laud (Moveable Type Books, 1999)
O Cidadn (Anansi, 2002)
Little Theatres (Anansi, 2005)

Translations

Installations (Muses Company, 2000) from French, with Robert Majzels, of Nicole Brossards Installations (crits des Forges, 1989)

Sheeps Vigil by a Fervent Person (Anansi, 2001, as Eirin Moure) from Portuguese, of Alberto Caeiro/Fernando Pessoas O Guardador de Rebanhos

Quasi Flanders, Quasi Extremadura (CCCP, Cambridge, UK, 2001, chapbook) from Spanish, of a selection from Andrs Ajens Ms ntimas mistura (Intemperie, Santiago de Chile, 1998)

Adan: pomes dEmma M. (housepress, 2002) from Kat into French, of the unpublished work of Emma M.

Museum of Bone and Water (Anansi, 2003) from French, with Robert Majzels, of Nicole Brossards Muse de los et de leau (Norot, 1999)

from m-Tal (Nomados, 2003, chapbook) from Galician, of part of Chus Patos m-Tal7 (Xerais, Vigo, 2000)

Erin Mour

Copyright 1988 Erin Mour

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published in 1988 by House of Anansi Press Ltd.

This edition published in 2006 by
House of Anansi Press Inc.
110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801
Toronto, ON, M5V 2K4
Tel. 416-363-4343
Fax 416-363-1017
www.anansi.ca

Distributed in Canada by
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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Mour, Erin, 1955
Furious

Poems.
ISBN-13: 978-0-88784-542-0
ISBN-10: 0-88784-542-8

I. Title.

PS8576.087S871992 C811.54 C92-095779-X
PR9199.3M68S87 1992

Author photo: Erin Mour
Cover design: Laurel Angeloff

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Printed and bound in Canada

(Immeasurable) thanks to Gail Scott, whose fiction, voice, and thinking helped seed the light that is in this book.

Andrew Wreggitt and Ken Mour each read this book in process. James Polk of Anansi edited, and sent my mind in new directions at the last minute. Libby Scheier wouldnt let me give up.

The poem Whose owes a line to John Newloves poem And The Dead Rose Up From The Water (Lies 1972).

The cover photo is from a 1983 wilderness equipment catalogue of Taiga Works, Vancouver, and is used with their permission.

To inhabit freely the civic house of memory

Some of these poems have appeared in:

Island
Event
Northern Light
Montral Now
Dandelion
The Dinosaur Review
Prism international
HERizons
Brick
The New Quarterly
The Capilano Review
Canadian Literature
Poetry Montral
Matrix
Descant
Fireweed
Poetry Canada Review
Bending Moment
Deep Down: The New Sensual Writing by Women, ed. Laura Chester
blue buffalo

Culture has been chattering and chattering but to no purpose. When a sentence becomes distinct, it makes no more sense or connection. Wherefore, the watcher says again Unintelligible, nods his head, and smiles gloomily. He puts a few coins on the table, grabs a cap, gropes his way down the broken stairs, mumbles good-morning to some rat-ridden super sitting in an old plastic chair under the stairs, and passes out.

Kathy Acker
Great Expectations

In whose garden I am sleeping
In whose garden I am sleeping perfectly,
the round cabbages with their blue-green leaves,
slug-dust on the outer border, a few ragged zinnias,
perfectly sleeping,
wearing the pea-trellis shadow over my pyjama,
listening to the carrot rooted in the earth,
its pointed microphone listening for water,
orange & hidden,
flawless
I am sleeping
It is true I am only sleeping
it is true that my fingers are uncurled & bothering no one,
the beets with their heads downward,
the row by row, the drug of topsoil,
lettuce & zucchini, their leaves & waiting,
my knees pulled up & feet splayed outward,
in whose garden,
refusing a few years to abandon my despair.

The irrational deafness of our heads, thats
all.
Where our elegant coiffure comes from,
our own fingers, hey: squirrel
hunting in the Rocky Mountains under the smell of spruce
forest I said I never would forget
& havent.
Damn it.
Where our research will get us,
home free, sliding fast
past the hard throw from second baseman.
Looking for just one more homer.

We are listening to too much music, & our tastes are lousy.

The squirrel my brother shot down with the .22 so the dog could play.
The dog just sniffed the dead fur
& looked up the tree again, eye
cocked for the squirrel.
It is always in our damn heads.

Or my head.

Or anyones.

When we got together, what we talked of,
the moose my uncle shot & cut up into frozen pieces,
& sent it down, in 1964, on the Greyhound.

What I forgot to say, was:
When we saw that box of moose hefted out of the bus bay in
the din of yelling navvies,
we knew it was goodbye to beef
till springtime.

& I havent talked to my aunt since.

I go deaf thinking of it. Or anything.

Having the most to lose.
Having a steadie gaze, &
most of all, a haircut.
Having sent everything to the laundry, even
the unlaunderable.
Having a photocopy of a page of writing taken
from a magazine.
I am in the car of my father with a mug of sweet coffee
outside Red Deer Alberta in the white of winter
wearing the coat Ive had twelve years
& not liking the coffee, either.
Between Edmonton & Calgary, the roads are closed by snow.
Drifts on the highway & hard wind
moving who knows where.

Having forgotten my destination
Having been capable of shyness
Having been shy
Having kissed my family on their nearest shoulders

What the highway is, pointing without slope or vision.
Its re-constructed dream
empty, finally
except for the curves & overpasses, the centre median.
To be, always, capable.